Archives 2008/2009 - News And Events - Contemporary Issues Through Videoconferencing

We raised $200 in collaboration with the Amnesty International Club at PV for Schools for Schools through the Invisible Children Program! Both the Amnesty International Club and CITVC watched the film Invisible Children: Rough Cut, and became active in the effort to raise awareness and funds for these suffering children of northern Uganda.

To watch the trailer of the film, click here!

CITVC participated in several videoconferences. Haiti since the January 12th earthquake. As part of our commitment to one of our providers, Global Nomads Group, we have become a team member of the StudentsRebuild challenge put forward by Architecture for Humanity, the Bezos Family Foundation and Global Nomads Group. The goal is to raise as much money as you can to help rebuild school in Haiti.

This is an ongoing event for our CITVC class, so next year we will return to raising money for this cause. So far we have raised $300!

For more information, please visit:

http://studentsrebuild.org
http://www.gng.org

"Our videoconferencing class has developed a special relationship with students from Ghana over videoconference. Now, they visited us in New Jersey, stayed with host families for one week (from May 28th - June 4th), went on a field trip to NYC with us, and attended our school for several days. We were so excited to be hosting these intelligent and engaging Ghanaians (students are ages 16-19)." -Leyla

Read about our hosting experience Here!

One of the host students, Matthew LaCorte, made a video slideshow for us all.

Global Nomads Group offered a Teacher Professional Development videoconference for all the schools involved in their project to rebuild Haiti on March 18, 2010. This vc was in preparation for two upcoming vcs live from Haiti during which our students will speak to their peers. They want all schools to join Architecture for Humanity, the Bezos Family Foundation and GNG in fund raising to help build better and safer schools in the earthquake-ravaged country. Teachers from all over the country and Canada spoke about what videoconferencing with Haitian students means to them and their school communities. Ms. Kathleen Menake spoke about CITVC and her students' hopes for their peers in Haiti.

The NNER 2009 Annual Conference was held on October 14th-17th. This year was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of "In Praise of Education." NNER reflected on the past decade and looks to the future with the themes of reflection, responsibility and renewal. Matthew Conforth, Director of Educational Technology at Passaic Valley presented in Washington state the following session: Contemporary Issues through Videoconferencing: Preparing Students for Democracy and Global Citizenship. Co-presenters were Gregg Festa, Montclair State University and Kathleen Menake, CITVC teacher at Passaic Valley. Several current CITVC students presented as well. Ms. Menake and her students were brought in via videoconferencing to talk with top educators about their unique class. The students did an excellent job of communicating their experiences to the higher education community. We presented at 11 a.m. Seattle time.
Read more about it here!

The Center for Pedagogy and The Montclair State University Network for Educational Renewal held its annual conference titled Classroom Reset 2010: Innovations in Teaching & Learning on January 6, 2010 at University Hall on the campus of MSU. This day was a showcase for teachers, college faculty and some k-12 students to model how they successfully "reset" their classrooms by utilizing emerging technologies. Matthew Conforth, Director of Educational Technology at Passaic Valley co-presented with Kathleen Menake, CITVC teacher at Passaic Valley at the following session: Contemporary Issues through Videoconferencing. Several current CITVC students presented as well via Skype. The students did an professional job of communicating their experiences to the higher education community.

"I've always felt that if you're going to be part of the modern world, you need to be able to use technology to your advantage. . . CITVC provides me with the technology I need to become a world citizen and to better understand the world around me." -Amanda

CITVC adopted an Alaskan sled dog for the 2009-2010 school year.
Our dog's name is Brit. She was born on April 22, 2008. She weighs c. 40 lbs.

Her goals for the season are:
Aura 25/25 sled dog race (Dec. 15 & 16, 2009)
Two Rivers Solstice 50 sled dog race (Jan. 21, 2010)
Two Rivers 200 sled dog race (March 13 & 14, 2010)
Taiga 300 sled dog race (April 5-8, 2010)

Kigluait Education Adventures (KEA), located in Talkeetna, Alaska, offers this program for schools to learn about sled dogs and sled racing as a way of life. Participating classrooms adopted their very own sled dog, collect data on the current health of the dog and track them through the web for the remaining for the school year. There are a variety of content activities for schools to explore mushing, Alaskan sled dogs, the Junior Iditarod, the Iditarod, etc.

We have already met our dog, Brit, via videoconference. Her description given to us prior to our meeting her was right on target: "Brit is one of those totally lovable dogs that just make you smile every time you're around her! And she runs like a champ!" Indeed, Brit often is in the lead of her team.

CITVC is keeping up with Brit through NING. We are looking forward to several more videoconferences with Brit and her owners, Richard and Christina Hum.
Click here to view our certificate!

NJEDge.Net is a non-profit technology consortium of academic and research institutions in New Jersey. The NJEDge.Net Conference 6.0 was held on November 18-20, 2009. The theme this year was Building Community through Collaboration, bit by bytes. Matthew Conforth, Director of Educational Technology at Passaic Valley co-presented with the CITVC class and Kathleen Menake, the CITVC teacher, in a session titled: Using Videoconferencing and Web 2.0 to promote Global Learning and Citizenship. Ms. Menake and her students were brought in via videoconferencing to talk about their experiences in their videoconferencing class. Read more about it here.

We Were On TV!

The Classroom Close-Up show on our class aired on NJN on
February 2nd, 2009@ 7 p.m.
February 7th, 2009 @ 9 a.m.
March 9th, 2009 @ 7 p.m.
March 14th, 2009 @ 9 a.m.

We were part of Show 11 - Global Conferencing
http://www.njn.net/television/njnseries/classroomcloseup/season2008-09.html

To see some footage of Ms. Menake explaining the mission of her course, CITVC, click here:
http://www.njn.net/television/njnseries/classroomcloseup/extras/index.html

New Jersey won the National Award for Excellence in International Education. PV was one of the seven schools in New Jersey named for having outstanding international education programs in a variety of areas, including use of technological tools. CITVC is proud of this recognition.

"New Jersey Wins National Award for Excellence in International Education

New Jersey has been awarded the Asia Society’s 2009 Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education by a state.

Commissioner of Education Lucille E. Davy accepted the prestigious national award on behalf of Governor Jon S. Corzine and the New Jersey Department of Education at a ceremony today the Asia Society’s headquarters in New York.

The annual awards program, launched in 2003, recognizes outstanding achievement by educators and others in promoting cultural awareness, world history and a global curriculum as crucial to the development of students as they prepare to enter the 21st century workforce. Awards are presented in four categories: State, Elementary/Middle School, High School and Media and Technology."

For the rest of the article, click here

At the annual ISTE Conference (International Society for Technology in Education) held in Denver, Colorado in June, 2010, CITVC teacher Kathleen Menake co-presented with her peers at Global Nomads Group as part of the program titled Making International Connections. This presentation was part of a larger program titled Building IVC Connections: Traveling the World with IVC. She highlighted her course, Contemporary Issues through Videoconferencing, as a course that is dedicated to improving global education.

"ISTE is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in improving learning and teaching by advancing the effective us of technology in PK-12 and higher education."

For more info on this conference, visit http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010